A Feminist Literary Collective (& outlaw poets swearing)

Robert G Wertzler

How curious it is
The wine of desire
Can we ever know
What variety of grapes
Must be crushed to make it?
Or how long it ferments
In eye, or heart, or loins
Is touch the yeast that
Works in creating its
Intoxication and sweetness
And its tang and bite also?
I think we cannot know, but
Whether we sip and savor
Or drain to the dregs
It is bewitching vintage

Bob Wertzler is retired from almost twenty years in the mental health field in California and Arizona. There are times the title, “Recovering Therapist”, seems to fit. In 2006 he retired to move to Western North Carolina to help and become primary care giver for his father who had developed Dementia. Before all that, there was work at various times as a soldier (US Army 1967-70), community organizer, cab driver, welfare case worker, wooden toy maker, carpenter, warehouse worker, and other things. He relates to a line in a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip its been.”

Gravity – invisible force
Holding the Moon in orbit
Sticking our feet to Earth
Gravity – mystery of physics
And of feeling, wanting
Drawing more together
Than just bodies
Resistance can feel futile
Whether colliding or
Swinging in orbit
Like double stars

Bob Wertzler is retired from almost twenty years in the mental health field in California and Arizona. There are times the title, “Recovering Therapist”, seems to fit. In 2006 he retired to move to Western North Carolina to help and become primary care giver for his father who had developed Dementia. Before all that, there was work at various times as a soldier (US Army 1967-70), community organizer, cab driver, welfare case worker, wooden toy maker, carpenter, warehouse worker, and other things. He relates to a line in a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip its been.”

The well of loneliness is deep
So deep, a hand reaching in
Cannot stretch to hold

The well of loneliness is dark
So dark, a light shined in
Is eaten up by shadow

The well of loneliness is cold
So cold, a torch of love dropped in
Is chilled to shards of ice

The walls drip with tears
The walls are slick with fear
The walls show no hand hold

In this inversion of a castle tower
With not even a high window
You can dream or pray for some
Long tressed Rapunzel to come
Let down her hair and pull you up

Where, for you is that cake
That made Alice grow so tall
And you tall enough to reach
The rim a climb out?

Could you cry tears enough
To fill it up and float up and out?
Oh, it seems many nights you could

If only you could grow wings
Wings of Faerie kind
Or wings of Dragon kind
To fly up and out and
Join a flock and soar

In truth, you are not alone
In this isolation,
Or need not be
You are legion
The lonely are a multitude

This Well of yours is
Built of Silence
Dug with Shame
And walled with Lies
Preached for ages
Lift your voice
Speak, sing, cry out
In lifting up your voice
Make yourself known
With your voice you
Can build a stairway
Out of that bitter Well

Bob Wertzler is retired from almost twenty years in the mental health field in California and Arizona. There are times the title, “Recovering Therapist”, seems to fit. In 2006 he retired to move to Western North Carolina to help and become primary care giver for his father who had developed Dementia. Before all that, there was work at various times as a soldier (US Army 1967-70), community organizer, cab driver, welfare case worker, wooden toy maker, carpenter, warehouse worker, and other things. He relates to a line in a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip its been.”

Oh, those happy endings
Don’t they always go
“And they lived happily ever after”?
In the fairy tales and rom-coms
It always seems so
And we are left to believe that
Is all we need to know
That there is no more story
Did Cinderella’s prince help
With the diapers and never
Cast an eye on a young chambermaid?
Did Rapunzel’s hero not
Go off on knightly adventures
Leaving her to mind the castle?
Did Harry and Sally never argue
Who would take out the garbage
Or were to go on vacation?
And what of old age and illness
Are we to believe there’s none of that?
Or, are they all really more akin
As are we all in romance
To Thelma and Louise
Taking mad and joyous flight
Toward an unknowable landing?
All alike? So it seems. So it goes.

Bob Wertzler is retired from almost twenty years in the mental health field in California and Arizona. There are times the title, “Recovering Therapist”, seems to fit. In 2006 he retired to move to Western North Carolina to help and become primary care giver for his father who had developed Dementia. Before all that, there was work at various times as a soldier (US Army 1967-70), community organizer, cab driver, welfare case worker, wooden toy maker, carpenter, warehouse worker, and other things. He relates to a line in a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip its been.”

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (Tolstoy)

Is it true of happy endings
What Tolstoy said of families
Or, are they all different?
I think endings come in
Different kinds we can
Remember as happy
Whether or not they may
Have felt so at the time
There can be relief that
Something is finally over
The anesthetic of memory can
Dull the pain given years to work
And paint over a dark scene
With brighter, rosy colors
But with new understandings
A remembered happy picture
Can be repainted with the
Far darker shades of regret or guilt
And if an ending is of the
“Happily ever after” kind,
Is it an ending or a beginning?
Perhaps I’ll set another story teller
Over against Mr. Tolstoy then

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” (Faulkner)

Bob Wertzler is retired from almost twenty years in the mental health field in California and Arizona. There are times the title, “Recovering Therapist”, seems to fit. In 2006 he retired to move to Western North Carolina to help and become primary care giver for his father who had developed Dementia. Before all that, there was work at various times as a soldier (US Army 1967-70), community organizer, cab driver, welfare case worker, wooden toy maker, carpenter, warehouse worker, and other things. He relates to a line in a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip its been.”

In a world run by madmen
She must be mad too
The choice is between
Being mad in the way
They see as sane
Or mad in a different way
One in keeping with her truth
Truth at once new and ancient
One in accord with her nature
And with nature’s nature
This is the sane madness
To change a madmen’s world

Bob Wertzler is retired from almost twenty years in the mental health field in California and Arizona. There are times the title, “Recovering Therapist”, seems to fit. In 2006 he retired to move to Western North Carolina to help and become primary care giver for his father who had developed Dementia. Before all that, there was work at various times as a soldier (US Army 1967-70), community organizer, cab driver, welfare case worker, wooden toy maker, carpenter, warehouse worker, and other things. He relates to a line in a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip its been.”

Mad? You say she’s mad?
She must be to so complain
To challenge how it’s always been
To think she could ever be his equal
To deny his right to the use of her
To so fly in the face of the natural order
To not understand that God is male
To seek to define her own place
To not accept there must always be
One above and one below and
Deny his right to be above her
And make him fear
She means to rule over him
No, it is not that sort of “Mad”
It is not insanity
It is rage
It is fed up to barfing
On the lies and bullshit
On the abuse and disrespect
Yes, she is mad, mad as Hell
And she will not be silenced

Bob Wertzler is retired from almost twenty years in the mental health field in California and Arizona. There are times the title, “Recovering Therapist”, seems to fit. In 2006 he retired to move to Western North Carolina to help and become primary care giver for his father who had developed Dementia. Before all that, there was work at various times as a soldier (US Army 1967-70), community organizer, cab driver, welfare case worker, wooden toy maker, carpenter, warehouse worker, and other things. He relates to a line in a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip its been.”